1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to tray devices and more particularly relates to managing tray device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A data processing system may employ one or more device trays, referred to herein as trays. The trays may mount tray devices such as hard disk drives, processors, and the like. A tray may allow a tray device to communicate with the data processing system through a connector. The tray may also provide power, cooling, and the like for the tray device.
The tray may allow an administrator to easily add tray devices to or remove tray devices from the data processing system. For example, the administrator may remove a first hard disk drive from the tray and replace the first hard disk drive with a second hard disk drive.
Data processing systems are often heterogeneous environments, with hardware components and software from many suppliers working together. As a result, standards have been developed to coordinate interoperability between hardware and software components from different suppliers.
For example, the Storage Networking Industry Association's Storage Management Initiative (SMI) was created to develop and standardize interoperable storage management technologies for the storage, networking and end user communities. The Storage Networking Industry Association published a SMI specification (SMI-S) that includes a Common Information Model (CIM). The CIM defines software classes that can be used to create objects that facilitate communications between disparate hardware and software components.
Unfortunately, SMI-S CIM does not include classes for objects that manage trays. As a result, vendors often must employ ad hoc solutions to manage trays in data processing systems.